Apple Music reportedly reaches 10 million paying subscribers

Apple’s new year is off to a great start, at least as far as its music streaming service is concerned: According to a new report, Apple Music has reached 10 million paying subscribers.

While unofficially announced, the number is nonetheless reported by a publication of considerable repute in the form of the Financial Times, which cites “people familiar with the matter.”

The number is a huge highlight for Apple Music, considering that it only took six months to hit the same milestone that its chief competitor, Spotify, took six years to reach. Apple Music debuted in more than 100 countries in June 2015, while Spotify was launched back in October 2008, and has since then expanded to more than 60 countries.

Spotify has a free ad-supported tier with limited features in addition to its premium unlimited service. It had 40 million active users when it passed 10 million paying subscribers in 2014. Spotify’s last official membership count announcement came in June, saying it had reached 75 million monthly users, 20 million of whom were paying subscribers.

Reached for comment by Business Insider following the report of Apple Music’s new milestone, Spotify didn’t provide its updated subscriber count, but said that the second half of 2015 saw its “fastest subscriber growth ever.”

As for Apple Music, it was officially announced by Apple CEO Tim Cook to have had 6.5 million paying subscribers plus 8.5 million customers on free three-month trials in October. Apple Music’s first batch of paying customers came off the free trial period at the end of September.

While some customers might have opted out of Apple Music because of bugs or other reasons, it would seem that a significant number of them had been sticking with the service, perhaps not least because of the service’s focus on human-curated playlists.

Apple is expected to provide an updated customer total for its music streaming service during its earnings call for the first quarter of fiscal year 2016 on Tuesday, Jan. 26.